There is a long, lovely list of details from this Malibu wedding that makes it utterly fantastic. The aquamarine and rose gold engagement ring, representing the groom. The soft and romantic gown the gorgeous bride had custom designed by L'ezu. The ring bearers and flower girl, the floral design, the chuppah with a view. The palpable romance between the sweet couple. And SO much more. All tied up with a bow by our dear Amber Events and captured by the lovely Llanes Weddings. I'll give you a few moments to take it all in, and then I fully expect to see you in the gallery where we will continue the list of lovely!

The one thing I had my heart set on when planning my wedding was to have it outdoors. The whole thing, not just the ceremony. I knew that meant taking a gamble on the weather. We got married in Malibu at the tail end of the summer (October 1st), when it is supposedly always warm and dry, but weather isn’t something you can bank on. It ended up raining the day before our wedding day and I remember reassuring myself that it would be fine if it rained on our actual wedding day. Everyone would hold an umbrella. We would still get married. The pictures would probably be kind of awesome. But luckily our actual wedding day was one of the most beautiful days I’ve ever experienced in California, or anywhere.

Having a wedding at a place like Rancho del Cielo has extreme pros and cons. The cons are that the venue involves a lot of logistical planning. We had to get everything up that mountain, from the kitchen, dance floor and bar, to place cards, flowers and candles. We were also required to use their many of their vendors and to hire a wedding planner. The last part of this turned out to be a blessing since we hired Amber from Amber Events. She’s like an incredibly capable best friend that will do anything for you.

I drew the pictures on our invitations myself, and my engagement ring was aquamarine and rose gold because my fiance knew that I wanted my ring (and all of our wedding colors) to resemble him - ruddy skin, blue eyes, silver hair. We had custom made round wood tables with white, blue and pink flowers in small vintage vases in mixed shades of blue and textures of glass, provided by Holly Flora. Each table also had lanterns and a vintage postcard based on where our guests were from (Broken Bow, Nebraska; Washington, DC; Johannesburg, South Africa).

I designed my dress with the fantastic women at L’ezu. I liked that it didn’t seem trendy and had an airy quality that felt appropriate for an outdoor party. My maid of honor, Ben’s sister, wore a sky blue dress that matched Ben’s best man, my brother’s, tie. I borrowed my mother’s earrings and wore my grandmother’s pearl bracelet, and a blue diamond stacking ring on my right hand that Ben gave me right before the wedding (he bought me a red one this past Valentine’s Day). All of our jewelry, including gifts for our wedding party, was custom made by Roxbury Jewelry.

Our photographers, Jenny and Joseph Llanes, were not only detail-oriented and technically on their game, they had a real sense of the energy of the night. Even more than posed photos, we wanted them to capture the intangibles, and they did, beautifully. My favorite photos of our wedding are photos that would have been impossible to stage. And our videographer, Alan Larsen, did an amazing job documenting the day from beginning to end.

Our day started with pink champagne and raspberry mojitos and ended with a wedding cake we never got a chance to cut because we were having too much fun on the dance floor (but someone brought us a slice that we fed to each other and have been dreaming about ever since). Our caterer, Along Came Mary, was fantastic and even made us a Rice Krispies Treat cake.

My advice to brides is to try to have the wedding you want, within reason, but whenever possible to go with the flow. The day we decided on our venue, when it was raining so hard our car sounded like a popcorn popper, Ben said that he couldn’t believe how easily the planning was going. I laughed because the place we loved had just told us they couldn’t do our date, which we had already started asking friends and family to save. The truth is, we wanted to get married above all else and that made it feel easy. We never forgot how lucky we were to find each other and to be able to have any kind of wedding at all, let alone one that was everything we wanted.